


To the deep ends

by themysteriouslou



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: All the Seeds sans Joseph are implied, Canonical Character Death, Fluff between the Angst, Gen, Grief, Minor Character Death, Resist Ending, Survivor Guilt, also known as my angst masterpiece... for now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 18:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17065238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themysteriouslou/pseuds/themysteriouslou
Summary: "How to start again when everything reminded her of what she had loved and lost?"In which Deputy Leslie Grünewald deals with the ghosts from The Collapse and mourns the death of a world she will never come back to.





	To the deep ends

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the tumblr link if anyone's curious: https://themysteriouslou.tumblr.com/post/180672456265/to-the-deep-ends

The days in the bunker went on smoothly. **  
**

Or at least, she perceived them that way.

It was difficult to guess how much time had passed since the bunker’s doors had closed to the outside world. Joseph had removed Dutch’s body one day after she had woken up from her blackout, muttering about giving him eternal rest once and for all. The hours following it, though? They felt the same to her, without any change that would point out something anew.

One thing she could be sure of was that, if she was careless enough, she could lose the perception of time in that dark box that kept her safe from “God’s wrath”. She had to keep herself constantly alert to the sounds of the radio, to some errant paper that had flown from the desk where Dutch had kept his things, to the calendar that was too far away from her eyes to see. Leslie knew she could ask Joseph, and she could almost picture the scene in her mind’s eye; him going and coming through the door, the rosary around his wrist tinkling with his footsteps, approaching her to give her to drink (or eat, or just to watch her without uttering a word). If she concentrated long enough, she could see herself looking at him and asking what day it was ( _how long have we been here?_ ) But it wouldn’t work.

She had already tried, step by step, but the words refused to come out of her mouth. Her lips were glued together, and the air in her lungs ( _wasted, of course it was_ ) did nothing but remind her that she was no more than a doll whose strings had been torn apart: soundless, motionless, and useless.

What remained of those efforts was him leaving the room and her making a futile attempt to extend her hands, a plea on the tip of her tongue:  _stay_. Because if Joseph stayed, her memory would give up the chance to torment her.  _Please, don’t leave me. Don’t go._

But he never saw her doing that gesture, and Leslie hadn’t the strength to repeat it when she was in his presence. Both were tired and preferred, somehow, to coexist without really interacting with each other. A kind of symbiotic relationship, one that ensured their survival but prevented them from interacting with the person who had caused the most damage in their lives.

 _Isn’t that right, Joseph?_  She thought, hearing his restless gait in the continuous room.  _I complied with everything you predicted, and even so, it’s difficult for you to see day after day the sinner you swore to convert to the cost of your family._

_The sinner that took everything from you, just as you took everything from her._

And she understood, she really did, and she didn’t blame him for it.

After all, every time she made the slightest attempt to blame him, something inside immediately reared its head at her, compelling her to close her eyes, to hold her breath and wait. Wait for the surrounding sounds to die out, for the lights to flick down like a candle’s flame—and then, stillness.

She had enough self-awareness to understand that her psyche’s silence wouldn’t last long. It never did. It creeped on the edges of her consciousness, reminding her of the words branded in her memory since she woke up in Dutch’s bunker.

_The world is on fire and it’s your fault._

“Breathe,” she whispered, the sound echoing through the empty room. Her throat felt hoarse when she took in a deep breath—when was the last time she swallowed?—and held it, allowing the lungs to expand and fill with the smell of ashes and humidity the bunker carried. It cleared her mind for a brief second, made it easy for her to listen to the pounding of her heart. She was alive, breathing and well.  _However, at what cost?_

Joseph claimed that God was purging the earth for them, that He was making sure they received a new and blank start. A pure one, where they would replace the bad with the good.  _Where they could forget._

But how to start again when everything reminded her of what she had loved and lost?

She didn’t even have to access her own mental space to remember it—the images assaulted her daily, regardless of whether she was awake or trying to sleep. She saw towers of fire rising from the forests. Saw the white church where everything had begun die out in a pile of dust before her eyes. Saw their faces, both known and not, frozen in time with the same widen-eyed, mouth-opened expression.

And yet, nothing could beat out the dreams.

 

…

Sharky was sitting next to her, roaring with laughter as they drove alongside the Henbane River, Johnny Cash blaring out of the speakers and a host of peggies following them closely from behind.

“C'mon, Les, you can’t tell me you’ve never tried it!” She couldn’t take her eyes off the road; hands firmly curled on the steering wheel, yet responded to his playful tone without missing a beat.

“Driving with music at full volume as I go through a horde of cultists? No, Sharky, I haven’t had time to attempt it.”

He laughed; the sound muffled by the wind as he leaned out the window and pulled his flamethrower with him. Looking through the rear-view mirror, Leslie saw the cultists trying to keep themselves out of the fire’s range.  _It can’t be helped_ , she mused, returning her vision to the road. _I would’ve rather lost them the old way but desperate times call for desperate measures._

The outlaw patted her hands affectionately, a mischievous glint in his eye. “You are in good hands; Dep. Uncle Shark will teach you everything he knows.”

“Only if you don’t call yourself uncle ever again.”

…

“Les, isn’t it a little… too much?”

Leslie looked away from the landscape below them, raising her eyebrows in brief confusion. Looking at her through the rear-view mirror, Nick sighed deeply, releasing Carmina’s controls to make a gesture with one of his hands.

“I mean that monstrosity of a bag you’re carryin’ in your hands.”

“Pregnant women need protein, Nick,” she beamed lightly, squeezing his shoulder to remind him to look forward, “I’d rather stuff your fridge to the brim than having Kim and the baby missing some delicacies to eat. That ain’t to do, don’t you think?”

He grinned, “You don’t have to go to all this trouble for us.”

“I want to. Now, keep your eyes on the front view—if we crash into a tree and die Kim’s gonna revive us just for the sake of killing us again with her own bare hands and that’s somehow an even more terrifying thought than the cultists doing it themselves.”

…

 

It was in that moment she opened her eyes.

It wasn’t the typical movie scene where someone jerks awake from a nightmare. She wasn’t screaming her lungs out because of something her mind made her see. She wasn’t sweating profusely, nor was she wondering if whether it was a dream or an actual incident.

She knew it was real. She knew it with the same certainty she felt when she saw those faces, mirages of a previous life where she didn’t feel alone. (Where the world outside was bright and hope was just around the corner. Where she could do things right…)

It wasn’t a nightmare, too. The images were too vivid, too precious to have been one. That much she did know.

Trembling, Leslie tested impulsively the shackles that had her bound to the bedpost, only to find her wrists free of the metallic cuffs. Joseph must have been sure she wasn’t going to attack him as soon as he took the chains off. He must have known that she…

 _You’re weak,_  a voice uttered in her ear, a soft and deep cadence that made her think of red (the color of his hair, of his burns, of the lights in the trial rooms, of the blood dripping down on Eli’s forehead).  _And you know what happens to the weak._

“I do.” Curled up in the bed, hands tightly drawn to her body in an attempt to stop her shallow breathing from taking ahold of her being, she darted her sight from the radio to the ceiling in quick succession until everything blurred out. “Believe me, I do.”

Morpheus didn’t look for her again, nor did he do it the following nights.

_It was for the best._

 

Joseph was bound to notice it sooner or later.

And, in all honesty, Leslie was right to assume it would be the former option.

“You haven’t been eating well,” he said, as she put her meal’s leftovers in a tupperware.

Her fingers twitched lightly, holding onto the food container as carefully as she could. His gaze burned the back of her head, making her want to face him. It’s all on the eyes, she thought, they’re called the windows of the soul for a reason.

And that was the exact reason for which she turned away every time he was near her. He would notice the slight frown in her mouth, the dark bags under her eye sockets, the tiredness of her features—she didn’t doubt Joseph was a perceptive man, one who knows exactly what a person is going through just looking at them.

He would know.

And she couldn’t let that happen. Not yet.

“It’s just your imagination,” Leslie assured him, looking at him over her shoulder.  _Yup, he’s effectively burning holes through my skull_. “I’m okay.”

_You’ve always been a terrible liar, but at least you can look like you’ve got yourself together._

“Now, if you excuse me…”

She didn’t see the tight-lipped expression that settled on Joseph’s face once she left the room, but it didn’t matter.

She would get acquainted with it soon.

 

…

“No!”

“As you hear it! It’s only a matter of time, Ladybug. The Monkey God has not forgotten me, we just have to wait.” Hurk clapped his hands, visibly satisfied at his audience’s stunned countenance.

The two were enjoying a pair of beers in the backyard of the Fort Drubman, taking a break from the fighting as soon as Drubman Senior’s truck Nancy —Leslie gripped the mouth of her bottle strongly, almost sneering at the thought of the traitor that sold her and her colleagues to a conflict neither of them wanted to happen.  _Fuckin’ Nancy_ — was safely back in her owner’s hands. It was just her and Hurk chilling in the sun, listening to the chirps of the birds and the sound of wind through the leaves of the trees…. until Hurk deemed the silence to be boring and dreary, and started telling her stories about his exploits around the world, about being part of a Resistance group in the past and crucially helping the hero when they needed him.

She suspected Hurk embellished some parts of his story, but it truly didn’t bother her. The places he went were exotic but dangerous and she wondered, in awe, how Hurk was still alive following that.  _Dumb luck or an actual Monkey God protecting him? No one will ever know._

“Are you still in contact with Ajay after what happened in Kyrat?”

“Sometimes, though I haven’t heard of him since the county closed off to the outside world,” Hurk opened his mouth, but then closed it and looked at her, furrowing his brows in contemplation. “Now that I think about it, you two are very similar. You’re both bull-headed and fight like mad dogs when you see people getting threatened by others.” He nodded to himself, in agreement with his own train of thought, “Yeah, you two would totally be each other’s best friends, after me, of course.”

Leslie shook her head slightly at his words, amusement still openly evident in her mien. “Should I take that as an insult or a compliment?”

"Whatever you wanna make of it, Ladybug.” Hurk stood up, stretching up and sighing at the feel of his joints popping into place. “Now, what d'you think about going to blow some peggie stuff up?”

…

“Adjust the angle two inches to the right.” Grace advised, watching her from the shadow of a tree.

Leslie nodded, closing her left eye and rotating her body slightly to the right, until she was aiming where she wanted it to be. Focus. She breathed in and pulled the trigger.

The thunderous noise of the shot made her grit her teeth and left a buzzing in her ears, but when she looked at the target, her hands tightened around her weapon’s handle in glee. Straight at the bullseye.

A calloused hand touched her shoulder. Grace was smiling at her, a proud smirk lighting her usual stoic face. “That was good, Les.”

Her lips quirked upwards, sighing deeply as she strapped her rifle to her back once more. “You’re a good teacher, Grace.”

“Have you done this before?”

“Opa used to take me to his and Dad’s hunting trips.” A wistful expression flickered in her mien.  _It’s a shame he’s not here anymore_ , her eyes wandered up to the sky, almost picturing in the clouds the solemn weathered face of a man who had been dutiful until the end,  _but then again, had he been alive Eden’s Gate would be shitting bricks and running to the next hill in fear, no doubt about that._ “We had – have – a sniper rifle back at our house, but it was my Gramps’s and there were few occasions were we took it with us. Most of the time we used standard rifles with suppressors.”

“I see.” And Grace understood, she truly did.

The former Olympic champion gazed at her companion and observed her posture attentively. Having been in the Army made her knowledgeable of certain aspects of body language—how the behavior of her colleagues or targets changed at the drop of a hat in the face of adversity and weariness. The deputy could fool anyone else with her composed semblance, but she couldn’t fool Grace. She wouldn’t let her.

“Come with me.”

Leslie looked at her, confusion briefly flashing across her face, but she followed Grace without a second thought. “Where are we going?”

“We are not far from Fall’s End. You need to eat and rest if you wanna take the cult down,” after a quick scrutiny, she nodded to herself, walking to the motorcycle stationed at the side of the road, “and perhaps a bit more practice at target shooting with that sniper rifle. I know a place for that—my Pop and I used to go there to practice our aim when we felt stressed. A change of air will do you good.”

“… Thank you”.

“Don’t mention it.”

…

 

_Fool, you absolute fool!_

Hands gripped onto the mattress underneath her body until her knuckles turned white, a way to keep herself from slipping away, to reminds herself she couldn’t go back. She could still feel the wind playing with her hair as she and Grace rode through the highway, her hands placed firmly on the motorcycle’s handlebar and the sight of Holland Valley’s gorgeous landscape in front of her. The colors, the sounds, the warmth of the sunlight on her skin… Everything felt so utterly vivid that one might think it was reachable.

Oh, she wished it was.  _Please, let me return_ , she begged, shutting her eyes so tightly it almost hurt.  _Please, please, please._.. Tremors shook her body with the force of ocean waves, making her gasp and loosen her strong hold on the smooth textile to grasp at her neck.  _Count!_

 _Uno, Due, Tre_ … She inhaled quickly, oxygen making its way to her lungs and brain.  _Quattro, Cinque, Sei_ … She sat up, holding her own head between her hands, giving into the structure she made to cope with the dreams. All she had to do was to breathe.

Had someone decided to seek her out, they would’ve found her in the darkness of Dutch Roosevelt’s former bedroom, her face giving nothing away while she looked at the ground with a focused but blank stare.

She was there, but at the same time… she wasn’t.

_You will not hide any longer._

“I know,” she muttered, digging her fingers through her hair. Flashes of people and places played like a movie inside her head.

Mary May’s gleeful expression when she saw that she managed to get the Widowmaker back.

Pastor Jerome sitting next to her in his church’s steps and giving her gentle encouragement to never doubt herself.

Boomer nearly barreling into her the second she returned to the town from the mountains.

Kim smiling at her from a wheelchair and putting her daughter in her hands, asking if she wanted to be the godmother.

_Believe me, I know._

 

…

“Come on, dear, you can’t tell me you haven’t had any experience when it comes to hunting meat, if you know what I mean.”

She sighed, pulling leisurely the line of her fishing rod back to her. “Addie…”

“Don’t "Addie” me, young lady.” Adelaide chided her, and then quieted down.  _Perhaps she forgot what she was going to say?_ The hopeful tone of her thoughts was, nonetheless, swiftly stifled as the Chopper Queen looked at her once more and waggled her eyebrows, a lewd smile blooming in her face. “I worry about you, when was the last time you had a bit of the old in-out, in-out?“

That absolutely prompted the reaction she was looking for: the deputy turned to face her so quickly she nearly fell into the river.  _It’s a shame I don’t have a camera with me right now_ Adelaide thought gleefully, watching her companion making an effort to stare anywhere but at her.  _Of all the things that could’ve encouraged a response, this one’s the quickest yet._

"Addie!” she spluttered, morphing into the true portrait of mortification. “Th— _That’s private!_ ” 

The older woman threw her head back and guffawed, slapping her thighs as if she had heard the greatest joke ever told. “That’s a good one, honey! You can tell aunt Addie everything, y’know. And for your information, it’s a small county, no one is private here about their matters, so you don’t have to feel ashamed of it.”

"For your information, trying to fight a cult seriously lowers my opportunities to "hunt meat”, as you say,” Leslie huffed, raising a hand up to her neck to rub it absently. It was warm and she didn’t doubt for a second it went red the moment she was caught off guard the way she had been.

“You’re doing a lot for us, Lessie.” Adelaide touched her shoulder and squeezed, “and we’re grateful for it. I just want you to have some fun. It mustn’t be easy to be the figurehead of the Resistance and you’re so young—you shouldn’t be going through this,” her voice lowered in volume, gaze wandering to the rippling waters below them in contemplation, “any of this, if you ask me.”

They fell silent as they observed the sun melt into the horizon, both of them lost in thought—mulling over the war, their comrades and the people they had to fight to liberate their home from the cult.

“Addie?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I stay at the marina?” she cleared her throat. “Just for the night, if you…”

“Of course, sweetie,” Adelaide stood up and extended a hand to her, helping her get to her feet. “You don’t even have to ask.”

…

She should’ve known it was a bad idea from the start.

"Damn moose,” Jess cursed, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I swear they’re everywhere.”

Finding a spot in the Whitetail Mountains where they could hunt wasn’t the hardest part of the day, the region being overflowing with wild animals of all kinds all the time of the year as it was. In fact, she guessed they should count themselves as fortunate: in one of the bags they had brought from the small market at the Baron Lumber Mill laid the skins of two deers and a coyote, in the other, their meat. A productive and calm day, indeed.

Or so they thought, until they heard the gunshots.

“Shit,” Les crouched down behind a bush, rummaging through her backpack till she found what she was searching: her binoculars. She felt Jess duck out by her side, waiting patiently for a report of their surroundings. “What do you see?”

“Cultists on their quads,” she pressed slightly to zoom in, furrowing her brow in concentration. “They… They’re leaving.”

“A shame, really,” Jess flexed her fingers around her arrows, as if conjuring up pulling them out and making of these peggies her own shooting targets. “Hopefully they’ll remember they forgot something and come back here.”

Leslie chuckled, standing up lest her legs went numb, and extended her hands to Jess, who accepted them right away. They were ready to part back to the mill to gather the rewards of their work.

That was the moment they noticed the mooses.

Two big, strong and shaggy mooses that looked pissed off and were looking right at them.

_Fuck!_

The deputy pulled her sniper rifle from her back as one of the mooses charged at her. Body tense and mind working at an alarmingly fast pace, she surrounded the hostile mammal, looking through the sight of the rifle and pulling the trigger.

The moose fell to the ground with a dull thud.

“Are they usually this aggressive?”

“Only when they’re startled by something.” The huntress adjusted the angle of her arrow, squinting until her eyes became thin lines, cold blue peeking from behind her lashes.

She shot. And the beast was dead in an instant.

Leslie approached the dead carcasses, slowly and carefully.  God forbid they were still alive and decided to kick her in the face as their last act of revenge. Her hands were placed at the inside of the mooses’ elbows and waited.

 _Nothing_. She sighed in relief, and then examined the carcasses intently: the bodies wouldn’t fit inside their bags. They were too heavy and huge for it, which meant they would have to call someone to help them carry it back at the mill.  _We have to skin them immediately, too_. For one, it would cool the meat and prevent the sourness of the bone. For other, it’d be a lot easier to remove the hide while it was still warm. It had been years since she watched her father, uncles and Opa do it, but she would manage. She always did.

She was about to call Jess, to look over her shoulder and ask for rope, when her eyes fixed on the antlers. A little smile spread across her face, visible enough for Jess to notice it.

The younger woman tilted her head and squatted down beside her, furrowing her eyebrows in slight confusion. “Why are you smiling?”

“It’s nothing; it’s just that it reminds me of a joke my Opa used to tell me.” Leslie smiled nervously, clearing her throat and trying to keep her face as straight as could. “Do you know why moose have such large antlers?”

Jess kept looking at her, waiting for the punchline that’d follow.

“To have better radio reception!”

Silence followed her awkward attempt to light up the mood.  _Way to go, Grünewald, way to go._

But then, she saw Jess’ lips quirking upwards and turning her gaze away from her, eyes crinkling in contained laughter.

Maybe the joke wasn’t as bad as she thought.

…

 

 _You were weak_. The memory of a giggle ringed in her ears, a distant sound from world consumed by the flames, rising from the grave to taunt her.  _And you were selfish._

The dream morphed. Instead of a remote forest in the Whitetail Mountains by Jess’ side, she was standing in front of the closed doors of a church—a church she knew all too well. Eyes adjusting to the light the moon provided her with; she saw the Marshal and Sheriff Whitehorse prepared to enter the church, from where chants could be heard beyond the building’s walls.  _Amazing grace, how sweet a sound…_

The night of the arrest. A shiver went down her spine, fear holding a tight grip on her heart.

Leslie looked at the marshal and the sheriff and the urge to grab them and pull them away from those doors was overpowering. She felt the words building inside her chest: the request to go back to the chopper, where Staci was waiting for her. You’re not going to come alive from this if you go through that door.

But her body refused to cooperate with her. She was a prisoner of her mind’s set-ups, reminders of the possible what-ifs that could have happened had she walked away. She gripped the cuffs in her hands tightly, hands trembling by the sheer force of her grasp, and went forward.

Except that, just before she entered the church, a hand touched her elbow, stopping her in her tracks. Joey Hudson gave her an encouraging smile and muttered, low enough for her to hear:

_‘You’ll be fine.’_

She wasn’t the Joey she remembered, the one who was filled by so much rage and pain against those who broke her.

No, she was the Joey who gave her advice about how to survive in the station without going crazy in the first try, the one who snarked at hers and Staci’s antics, the one who became her first female friend in the county.

The Joey from before.

_No…_

Another hurricane of colors surrounded her; the church’s doors slowly moving away as a new image replaced it.

She was running through a bunker, looking for… someone. Someone important to her. She had to find them before Jacob’s men noticed the trail of dead bodies left in her wake. She promised him she would come back for him. 

And she did.

A sheen of sweat covered her body, soaking darkly into her clothes along with the grime and blood from battling the Soldier on that mountain.  _Hurry!_ She walked into a room quickly, almost barreling into the figure strapped at the lone chair in the center of the room.

Staci Pratt opened his eyes with difficulty, the wounds in his face still leaking blood. When he looked at her, it was as if he was seeing a miracle, as if her presence were but just as dream.

_‘Rook, are you real?’_

Her throat tightened, swallowing down a sob as she inspected him.  _Oh, Staci…_ Sweet Staci Pratt, the first one after Whitehorse who welcomed her to the station. He had always been kind to her, even when he was teasing her at all times of the day, leaving a mug of coffee at her desk every single morning without fail.  _They broke him. He broke him. Oh God…_

As she reached for her fellow deputy’s bonds, she was pulled away from the bunker, Staci’s hopeful face fading into black before her frantic eyes.

_No, no, no!_

As soon as the scene changed, Leslie found herself in the pilot seat of a truck. She saw the walls encircling the Hope County Jail coming into view, people pouring out of the structure to take care of their injured and dead.

Sound gradually started reaching her ears. She blinked once, twice, thrice—and turned on her seat to listen to the person speaking to her, hands leaving the steering wheel to rest on her lap.

Earl Whitehorse was sitting on the copilot seat of the truck, exhausted but alive, face reflecting the fondness and pride he felt for his junior deputy. His eyes wrinkled around the edges when he smiled at her, patting her hands as a proud father would to his daughter.

_‘A lot of good people died, but everyone here, all of us, we’re alive because of you… and I’m damn proud of you.’_

Tears gathered in her eyes at his words. She struggled with the invisible bindings that didn’t let her reach for the sheriff. There were so many things she wanted to tell him. So many, and the dream gave her the opportunity to do it. She just needed to try harder….

Just as she managed to raise her hands to him, everything dimmed out.

Until all she could see were a succession of images. Images she thought she forgot, except she hadn’t.

Cameron Burke was staring at her, a finger on the trigger of his gun. His hands were extended to his sides and his posture displayed an alarmingly openness that chilled her to the bone.  _‘I told you I didn’t want to leave’_ ; he spoke, voice carrying a dejected touch to it. She dared to glance to her right side, horror striking her chest at the sight of Virgil Minkler’s lifeless body beside the table where he and the marshal had been playing cards before.

_Stop._

Tammy Barnes was giving her speech at Eli’s funeral, her voice trembling as she recalled how her dear friend helped her when she needed someone the most, the one who gave her a second chance to be useful. Once she finished, she looked straight at her and walked up until they were standing face-to-face, her eyes shining from unshed tears.  _‘It wasn’t you. Eli knows that.’_

_I killed him, and he knew._

Tracey was looking at her through the window of the truck, a soft expression that she wasn’t used to see exposed in her mien. She didn’t think there was a more capable person to fight against the cult as Rook, not after everything she had done for them. _‘You saved a lot of people here today, Rook. Don’t forget that.’_

In the shadow of a tree, in a meadow somewhere in the Holland Valley, Cheeseburger laid his head on her lap, purring happily when she scratched him behind his tiny ears. Leslie grinned down at him, placing a gentle kiss on his brow.  _‘I know you’re tired, but I promise that soon all you’ll have to worry is how many salmons I’m going to bring you. You like that, don’t you?’_

Peaches was running alongside her, sprinting past one of the forest trails she had accidentally found in her hunting trips. There hadn’t been calls over the radio for her, no one was in need of a rescue, and the cult had retreated briefly to rethink their strategy. Enjoying the warm rays of the sun as the autumn breeze played with her hair, the deputy halted her steps, closing her eyes and just breathing in the fresh air of the mountains.  _Life’s good._

_You’ll be the one who decides what happens. You were the start, and you’ll be the end._

Hands reached out to her body from the dark, shaking it at a persistent rhythm.  _Deputy…_

_You did everything he said you would do. And you didn’t even know it. You had no fucking clue._

The movements intensified, trying to rouse her from her slumber.

_May God have mercy on your soul._

…

 

She stirred awake and sat up, blinking to chase away the blurriness of her sight. Where was she?

Her hands flexed tentatively from one place to another, feeling the soft textile of the couch under the pads of her fingers. She didn’t remember falling asleep on it, but then again, neither she remembered walking away from her room to the bunker’s living room/kitchen mix.

_So much for swearing sleep off._

“My child…”

Her muscles stiffened.

_Oh, fuck._

“Deputy…” His voice was a whisper, but she heard him well. It was difficult to not do so, when he was at her side and blocked the bluish light of the aquarium, giving the shadow her sensible orbs needed to see. “Was it a nightmare?”

He saw her hesitate, close her hands strongly over her trousers and give out a shaky sigh.

The deputy had always tried to stay composed in his presence, to hide her emotion behind a strong and inscrutable mask she had created to give others the security they needed. The security she needed. He saw it in his church, that fateful night when the county’s sheriff department came to arrest him and pull him away from his faithful, and he saw it the night she refused to accept his peace offer.

But the grief had been consuming her for days—once he went through his own time to grieve for his siblings and his faithful, he noticed it, in every movement she did. He didn’t have to look at her face to know what was happening to her. He already did.

Joseph breathed in, and drew her in close, holding her against his heart so she could listen to the beating of his heart. Constant, even. He looked at her face and was almost startled to see her eyes welling up, figure slightly shaking in his arms. She was holding back.

He wouldn’t let her.                                                                                                 

“You don’t have to hide it anymore.”

The silence in the room was deafening for a second.

Then, brick by brick, her walls came tumbling down, leaving behind a rawness borne of an open wound that hadn’t been given the chance to heal.

As much as she tried to let it out little by little, as much as she tried to control it, the pain came out from her throat in the form of a silent howl, sobs wracking against her chest with such intensity that she clung to Joseph in an attempt to steady herself. She pressed her forehead against his skin and wept bitterly, her sight turning the world into a blur of color until all she could see was gray.

“I want to go back” she choked on through the tears. “Please, let me go back. They’re dead. They’re dead and I see them everywhere. I want to correct this, please, let me go back.”

Joseph’s arms tightened around her middle, before whispering in her ear.

“You can’t.” He stroked her hair, pulling it away from her face carefully, kindly. “They’re dead, but they aren’t suffering anymore. They’re with the Lord now, in a place where there’s no pain, where they will not lack anything. And one day,” his voice took on a fierce tone, “one day, we will meet them again. I promise you that.”

She nodded, blinking away the tears to look at the newspaper clippings and photos she had collected from Dutch’s former war room. Boomer, Sharky, Grace, Nick, Hurk, Jess and Adelaide stared at her over Joseph’s shoulder, smiling contentedly at her.

_Someday, we’ll find each other for a second time. But until then… wait for me, guys._

_I love you._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first angst-driven piece I've written for the FC5 fandom, the first of many to come. Watch out for that.  
> Fun fact: I posted it on tumblr three/four days before New Dawn was announced so I guess we'll see more of this verse in the future?


End file.
